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An anonymous reader writes "Mathematician Benjamin K. Tippett has written a fascinating and deadpan paper (Pdf) giving insights into Cthulhu. A 'Bubble' of warped Space-Time makes alarmingly consistent sense of the dead God's cyclopean city under the sea. From the paper: 'We calculate the type of matter which would be required to generate such exotic spacetime curvature. Unfortunately, we determine that the required matter is quite unphysical, and possess a nature which is entirely alien to all of the experiences of human science. Indeed, any civilization with mastery over such matter would be able to construct warp drives, cloaking devices, and other exotic geometries required to conveniently travel through the cosmos.'"

HP Lovecraft was a product of his times, and he recanted these views before his death. He also married a Jewish woman, although at the time he did so he still had some strong feelings against immigrants. There are a few really good documentaries on him that go into this aspect of his life.

Also, he's a huge influence on my own work, the Maniac Loveseat series I do especially. - HEX

Excuse or reason? If you were born to parents of racists it's highly likely that you would hold their worldview, at least for some time in your life, till you had the knowledge and experience to form opinions otherwise. It is easy now to look into the past and judge, how will history look upon you and judge what you are ignorant in?

Many people are born into racist families and when they are old enough to discover the world for themselves, they become disabused of the notions that their parents held.

Lovecraft was 22 years old when he penned this gem.

When, long ago, the gods created EarthIn Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth.The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;Yet were they too remote from humankind.To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan.A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.

There is a difference between the ignorance born of unfamiliarity and race hatred. Lovecraft practiced the latter. Lovecraft lived in a time of northern migration of a lot of blacks who sought to escape the crushing racism of the south. So I can surmise that he encountered some black people who fit the stereotypes that were common in his day but to accept such as the norm is akin to meeting one stingy Jew and operating as if they're all Shylock.

Lovecraft was a piece of shit racist. I don't care how many people enjoy his writing.

What I find fascinating is the propensity of supposedly intelligent people to judge the past using the morals of the present, without taking into account the prevailing culture of that period they are being so judgemental of.

Equally interesting and rather more worrying is the tendency to want to completely erase a person from history when it is discovered the person has a flaw.

So Lovecraft was a racist. So were many of his era, to the point where not holding those views was unusual at best. Does that really invalidate the literary merit of his work?

No person is defined by a single aspect of their personality, we are far too complex for that. If that were the case, people would not be able to learn and adjust to new viewpoints of any kind, much less moral viewpoints.

We do not change reality by changing the law, says your sig. It's true, we don't. We also don't change the past by denying it. And we can't change the future without learning from our past.

Finally - and this is intended to be thought provoking rather than insulting - how is your prejudice against people because of the views they hold any different from the prejudice against people because of the colour of their skin? You are placing them in a box labelled "arsehole", purely because of the views they hold, in spite of the fact that their racism was culturally normal and was only a single aspect of their humanity, much like a black man's skin. I'd be uncomfortable with that myself.

We live in an 'enlightened' age where we realise that racism is a bad thing. But we subscribe to plenty of other virulent irrational hatreds (according to another age's moral viewpoint). How would we feel if the best and brightest of our generation were discarded from future history books for being religious, or disagreeing with homosexual marriage, or eating meat, or supporting climate alarmism, or driving cars, or any one of a hundred other things that we consider normal now?

Our current views are incomprehensible to an educated person of 200 years ago. An educated person of 200 year's time will probably find our current worldview primitive beyond belief.

Hesitate to judge, lest ye be judged in turn. Appreciate the genius of Lovecraft's writing and ignore his irrational prejudices.

why can't you do both? why must you ignore the bad parts? i think lovecraft was a great writer. and i think he was an asshole racist. i can balance both thoughts in my head. why do i have to discount that he was an asshole racist because he was a good writer? because asshole racism was the dominant opinion of his time? well then i simply say the entire culture of that time is brutal and ugly. there's no intellectual dishonesty in that. what is intellectually dishonest is ignoring the bad parts or excusing t

shush now... I was merely attempting to balance a predominantly 'PC' representation of our current worldview with a balanced counter-opinion. I'm actually climate-agnostic these days.

and if that's the one thing you picked up on from the points I raised, then, yes, it's clearly the frontrunner candidate for being something that future generations will dispute and/or laugh at us for.

What I find fascinating is the propensity of supposedly intelligent people to judge the past using the morals of the present, without taking into account the prevailing culture of that period they are being so judgemental of.

Equally interesting and rather more worrying is the tendency to want to completely erase a person from history when it is discovered the person has a flaw.

And Gary Glitter is, today, a pedophile. Yet any of the girls I went to school with would have done anything to have sex with him; they'd have been throwing themselves at him. I think that at the time everyone expected that he was having sex with young girls and the shock would have been if it turned out he *wasn't*.

1. there were plenty of people who were not racist in lovecraft's time, or any time period or culture before that. that the majority had bad beliefs doesn't excuse anyone from any time. in the future, if they condemn our time as a bunch of crass plutocrats and people worshipping money and selfishness, i'd be pissed if they grouped me in with the loud ignorant assholes of our time. guilt by temporal association?

2. it is entirely possible to discount lovecraft as an asshole racist and not commit any sort of i

judge the past using the morals of the present, without taking into account the prevailing culture of that period

Well duh. Morals are relative. You seem to think that means they're rooted to their associated culture, but that's not really how it has to be. My views on morals are relative to me. So I can say that something is horrendously atrocious...to me. And I frankly don't care about context or the social norms of the time and the environment in which this guy was raised. (Actually, I do take that into account, but it doesn't sway me much. But hey, that's just me.)
Sure, it might not seem racist *to them* at the t

Those are not excuses, they are statements of fact, just like his racist views are facts. A minor point, but it was a cultural racism, not a biological one, he was never concerned with "stock" as you put it. He married a Jew because she was "well assimilated" to the New England ideal. Personally I was glad to learn that he moved beyond his upbringing and experiences in New York/Brooklyn and moderated his views before his early death. There are plenty of other figures throughout history that did great things

Whenever the constitution (or anything involving the founding of the US) gets discussed, conservatives drag the founders into the discussion, arguing that they did or did not mean X when they wrote Y. As if the founders were somehow wise sages, and we're not worthy. The reality is that they were fallible people with their own bad and nasty sides. Just because they would not have agreed with something is no reason not to do it.

No, his point is that since Lovecraft was a racist that he was a *bad person* and that other people, like the founders of the US who were also racists are "all bad" because people like Jefferson had slaves and that being a product of the times is not an excuse.

Read LK's other post where he calls Lovecraft a "piece of shit"

It is judging the past with the so-called enlightened eyes of the present. It's bullshit. it's bullshit because when we are dead like the founders and Lovecraft, we will also be judged o

So in your opinion, if someone is bad in one area, they are all bad, and they cannot redeem themselves ever?

You must be a lot of fun at parties.

--
BMO

Many people seem to think like this. Really stupid thinking that results in damning different sections of humanity to the pit every 50 years or so. Used to be gays, women: now it's pedophiles and immigrants.

Quite possibly. The point I was making is that human society seems to need people - The Other - who can be stripped of any humanity on the basis of one labelled characteristic or another. But show me some evidence that says stripping anyone of their humanity actually improves society. There's no evidence to support the death penalty as a successful deterrent for example. Yet it is still used as the ultimate demonstration of State power and to satisfy a sadistic yearning and frustration in the populac

The self-importantce and "my shit doesn't stink, but everyone else's does" just bleeds from your posts.

Just... wow.

Martin Luther King's assassination was long after HP Lovecraft died. HP Lovecraft lived in a different world than you do where it wasn't so obvious that racism was bad. Indeed, in most places it was *required.*

Judging the past through the the eyes of the present blinds you to your own faults in the present because you assume that your worldview is enlightened.

>So then, he wasn't such a visionary after all. Right? He was only an average thinker for his day...

People aren't visionary in every subject. Einstein was a genius with physics, but he was a terrible husband. Does that make him "a piece of shit"? Your argument is that if someone is flawed that they are just "average thinkers" and "pieces of shit" no matter what else they've contributed.

What about you? Do your faults negate all the positive stuff that you contribute to the people around you?

In the end, I have to so the fark what? If we reject in their entirety the ideas of a person who holds some views that we disagree with, we would quickly have no ideas left Yes he was a racist, but also a good writer. Everyone has bad parts.

You change throughout your life, and can realize the views you're holding are wrong. I was certainly a little shit when I was younger, and will probably look back at the views I hold today and be at least a little embarrassed.

It's speculative inquiry and it's perfectly fine scientific activity. It's quite common in theoretical physics to imagine or concoct various system parameters - either reasonable or wild - and see where those assumptions lead. Einstein's choice of the GR field equations was in part an educated stab that turned out to work. Physics is full of ideas that we accept as ok but that began life as a guess.

Satirical scientific articles are a field of literature ripe for expansion. The only one I know of to have really found a wide readership (at least among those who follow modern literature) is Georges Perec's Cantatrix Sopranica L. [amazon.com] . Of course, the Sokal hoax paper is also a brilliant piece of writing.

IMO that was the most interesting one. He used the thiotimoline gag in a couple other short stories. The interesting part is when he did his doctoral dissertation. From wikipedia:

The story of the genesis of this spoof was one of Asimov's favorite personal anecdotes, one he retold a number of times in print. In the spring of 1947, Asimov was engaged in doctoral research in biochemistry and, as part of his experimental procedure, he needed to dissolve catechol in water. As he observed the crystals dissolve as

Satirical scientific articles are a field of literature ripe for expansion. The only one I know of to have really found a wide readership (at least among those who follow modern literature) is Georges Perec's Cantatrix Sopranica L. [amazon.com].

Not quite the same thing. You've linked to the short single work "Cantatrix Soprano L.", while the book I linked to at Amazon (an anthology of the same title) includes not only that, but Perec's other faux-scientific articles.

The Endochronic Properties of Resublimted Thiotimoline [wikipedia.org] by Isaac Asimov.A spoof chemistry paper which he told Campbell to publish pseudonymously in case it prejudice his upcoming thesis examination. Campbell used his real name, his examiners asked about it, and still gave him his doctorate.

This is the point where his boss should tell him, "The purpose of science is to serve mankind. You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Dr. Tippett."

What would a "God" really be? Someone with vastly higher intelligence, using technology that you can't comprehend. Everything they did would seem magical, mystical, miraculous. Since you couldn't even comprehend their world, all you would be able to do is make up myths and legends and tall tales to explain their "Godliness".

What would a "God" really be? Someone with vastly higher intelligence, using technology that you can't comprehend. Everything they did would seem magical, mystical, miraculous. Since you couldn't even comprehend their world, all you would be able to do is make up myths and legends and tall tales to explain their "Godliness".

A God would not need technology to do that.

True, a race using a higher technology than another race would appear to have god-like powers, but only until the technology was unveiled to the other race.

Keep in mind that most gods are not assumed to be omnipotent, except in a few monotheistic religions. Non-omnipotence implies that they have to obey the basic rules of whatever reality they inhabit, or at least some of them. A non-omnipotent god probably can't do instant teleportation through space. Maybe they can convert themselves into light and travel at light speed, but as far as we know you need to warp space to do better than that. Perhaps they can warp space with willpower alone, but that might be tiring over vast distances. It isn't unusual for a god to be portrayed as using a chariot or steed, so why not a ship? If it's easier for the god to build a warp drive and take a relaxing boat trip across the cosmos, why not? Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

I can build a brick house to completion with my bare hands and simple tools, but it's intensively tiring. So instead I use wisdom to find indirect ways to accomplish the same goal (getting a completed house). I'd assume anything more brilliant than I would do the same.
Put this way, I'm starting to feel like an "indirect way" myself.

Non-omnipotence implies that they have to obey the basic rules of whatever reality they inhabit, or at least some of them.

Omnipotence generally implies this as well, with respect to the constraints of logical non-contradiction--on the basis of (in brief), if you object that a supposedly omnipotent God cannot, say, make a square circle, you have not in fact identified a limitation on omnipotence, rather, at base you have failed to use language meaningfully.

I'm not talking about drawing square circles or making rocks so heavy even they can't lift them. I'm talking more in the realm of violating relativity, thermodynamics, etc. In my mind, omnipotence is the ability to cause the universe to transition into a state that, while perfectly valid and non-contradictory under the laws of that universe, could not have been reached via any application of said laws from the previous state.

In my mind, omnipotence is the ability to cause the universe to transition into a state that, while perfectly valid and non-contradictory under the laws of that universe, could not have been reached via any application of said laws from the previous state.

Well, in monotheistic theologies, particularly Christian ones, omnipotence is defined not as "the power to do anything", but as the attribute of "being all that's possible", that is, the "can" in each and every sentence of the form "x can y" (provided "x" and "y" are both real). That works more or less like when you define God as "the Being", that is, as the "is" in any sentence of the form "x is y" (also provided "x" and "y" are both real). When 'x' and/or 'y' aren't real, on the other hand, it just adds a

Lovecraft's various creatures, including Cthulhu and others variously described as "gods", had extraterrestrial origins (eg. "from outer spheres"). Basically the idea was that they were ancient and vastly powerful extra-dimensional beings, not gods in the sense that you're thinking.

Why the fuck would any self-respecting god need technology? I was always under the impression technology was humanity's attempts at mitigating our shortcomings as NON-Gods.

First of all: Villagers use pitchforks. Gods use tridents. That being said, the trident is a tool. In theory, mythological gods used tools to do things so they wouldn't have to do things themselves. The most-commonly-used tools of the gods were people. If you have to do everything yourself, you're not a god, you're just that guy in the cubicle at the end of the row who doesn't understand shell scripting.

A trident is actually a fisherman's tool. Unlike a pitchfork, the tines on a trident are usually barbed or angled so as to trap prey, whereas the tines on a pitchfork are designed so that things will slip off easily when they're being pitched. There's no need to compare the tridents some gods are depicted with to pitchforks when comparing them to regular old human tridents will work just fine.

Only gods which want to participate in the material world need it. Think of the material representation as an avatar. The god itself is outside the universe, but to act in the universe (as opposed to just affect it), the god needs an avatar inside the world, which is then bound to the laws of the world (which the god can, of course, tweak to its liking, e.g. by introducing exotic matter which doesn't otherwise exist, but the laws cannot be completely lifted because that would mean to destroy the world that

Well, that doesn't matter. Most of the birther challengers fundamentally reject the idea that the man is legitimate, reject that he possibly can even BE president, and basically have pushed themselves into a logic corner where something cannot possibly be true, so it is simply not true regardless of facts, paperwork, evidence one way or the other, and so on. So, in their eyes, he is not a citizen because he cannot be. That's all. There is no other answer.

A more scientific approach is to consider what the evidence tells you and then form a conclusion. A more scientific approach is to consider what the evidence tells you and then form a conclusion.

It should be noted that the conclusion will often be "a conclusion cannot be formed", assuming a scientific approach.

There's a lot of nonsense in the science cheerleader community -- non-scientific concepts like 'default position' (related to the above) do more harm than good. In their effort to defend science against some perceived threat or defend some ideological position, they've abandoned science, reason, and logic; they've become an even more dangerous threat to science than any creationist group cou

And then they alternate between fitting either way and not fitting at all. Obviously what we see is a malluable 3-dimension slice of a complex multidimensional object that is rotated by the one multidimensional manipulation tool we currently possess: the tumble dryer.

As long as the exotic matter isn't made of midichlorians, we can still be friends.

This just in : Disney has bought out the. H.P. Lovecraft estate. A Star Wars/Marvel/Cthuluhu/Disney Princess animated film is rumored to be in production.

Sorry it's all public domain. His aunts died years ago and the last issues over so shared ownership rights expired. The rights have been questionable for years since it was mostly August Derleth claiming he changed a number of stories and got them republished as collections. All that has expired and he's been dead a long time. Even Burrough's stuff is entering public domain. It's why they were able to make that cheesy A Princess of Mars film, I mean the cheapie one not the big budget cheesy film which Disne

That may take care of Cthulhu, but what about the geometry of the Temple of Bel-Shamharoth? It had a tessellation made of octagons. Assuming that they were convex octagons, what kind of non-euclidean geometry would be necessary for such a tiling to exist? (In euclidean geometry, no convex polygon with more than six sides can possibly tile the plane.)

Back in college, a friend and I were trying to figure out what could possibly make people go mad from the mere sight of Cthulhu. We decided it must have uncountably infinitely many tentacles. A mere countable infinity of tentacles could be visually comprehensible, so long as each one is half the size of its predecessor, or if they were arranged in a fractal tree structure of tentacles upon tentacles. But uncountably many tentacles would drive you insane at first sight.

But there are a countable number of (visible) stars, it's just a large number. And the infinity of space is literally unobservable. It's just black. So you're not seeing an uncountably infinite number of anything up there.
Just don't think too hard about it, otherwise you'll face something similar to the Total Perspective Vortex [slashdot.org]